Roll up your sleeves, blaze your flame, and ready your hammer! For this book will take you on a metal working, weapon forging, and tool wielding journey in the basis of blacksmithing. Whether you're a mechanical engineer who wants to have an edge over their colleagues in manufacturing courses, an old-tools collector, a classic blacksmith who takes pride in their craftsmanship, or a curious reader who's interested in knowing how iron tools and weapons were made before the existence of factories and machines, this book will do it for you. It's no secret that blacksmithing is a dated profession, yet there are thousands of workshops around the world working the old ways. Sometimes because the working is required in low quantity or high detail, more often because nowadays blacksmiths take it more as a hobby or a genre of art to produce sophisticated pieces of steel or glass. "Nothing that has been made in modern times is equal to the specimens which remain of that period." Writes M. T. Richardson about the medieval era. With over a thousand labeled illustrations and lively descriptions, this book is all you need to grasp the concepts of classical blacksmithing and understand the basis of modern-day machines.